Gaza '88

Driving south from the Eretz checkpoint we passed the turnoff to the Jewish colony (now dismantled) just to the north of Jabaliya. There was another checkpoint, there, backed by a Merklava battle tank. Most Palestinians taking part in this first Intafada were armed with nothing more than a molotov cocktail and a rock. The tank says it all - go in with overwhelming force. No 'graduated response' here.

The Intafada had been grinding on since 1986 - it was now 1988 and the thing had evolved into a brutal routine. Palestinian youths would set up a roadblock in Jabaliya with burning tyres and the IDF would turn up and fire tear gas, rubber bullets, and sometimes live rounds. If the IDF didn't turn up the youths wouldn't set up the roadblock. If the youths didn't set up a roadblock, the IDF wouldn't bother turning up. The obvious solution was everyone stay home, but that wasn't the point.

The Intafada began with a boycott of Israeli goods to force the IDF to relax restrictions on free travel through the Gaza Strip and to cease random closures of the border crossings. It quickly gained momentum as hellholes like Jabaliya and Khan Younis erupted with mass protests, usually degenerating into stone throwing. All Palestinians working for Israeli utility companies went on strike - and there lies a tale.

Down Jamal Abdul Nasser street, where the Red Crescent compound was located, was a hot box for the street's power. The IDF came one day in an armoured car and pulled all the fuses - including that to the Red Crescent. After the IDF went, striking Palestinian power company employees came with a ladder and replaced them. The IDF came back and removed them again that evening. This farce continued for a couple of days with the Palestinians restoring power and the IDF disconnecting it until the armoured car came back again and the soldiers smashed the hot box with a sledge hammer. The Palestinians had refused to pay their power bills and the Israelis would rather smash their own equipment rather than allow them free power.

The ever polite and hospitable Palestinians workers then came and apologised they couldn't give us power.

Everything depended on electricity - sewage, water, as well as domestic uses. With no power, the sewage flowed out onto the street - that in an insufferably hot environment. The smell was beyond words. The rubbish wasn't collected, either, because those workers were on strike. Instead, the locals built huge rubbish fires - just imagine!

I didn't know that much about Hamas, then. Hamas, an offshoot of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood, were one of a number of Palestinian groups who sprouted like mushrooms during the eighties. Nobody had organised the Intafada - it just happened - but Hamas assumed a sort of leadership by default. Al Fatah wanted nothing to do with it - although they later tried to muscle in and claim credit. It's on record that Mossad helped fund Hamas way back in 1982 as a counter to the secular, and Soviet backed, Al Fatah.

Palestinians tend to call Westerners 'Shalaf,' derived from 'Chevalier,' the French word for 'knight.' It dates back to the Crusaders and was clearly a perjorative once. But, now, it's used much like 'honky,' as a kind of affectionate derision. I was also called 'Christian' or 'Merican'. It's weird being defined by a Religion, but that's how it is. You're a Westerner, therefore you're Christian, regardless of your personal beliefs. You're also 'Merican,' even though you're not American. Don't we cover Arabs with one blanket term? They sure as hell don't. Anyone wearing a kuffiah becomes 'an Arab' to Western eyes, be they Saudi, Moroccan, Syrian, Israeli Arab or whatever.

Even then, we read in Western papers how Palestinians were using their kids as shields. Palestinians, like most Moslems, regard children as gifts from God. Traditionally, Palestinian children are fed before the adults at mealtimes as a way of affirming their exalted status in the household. To claim 'Terrorist' Palestinians would push kids out in front of them is scurrilous beyond reason. Palestine is also rather a macho and paternalistic society and your average male would rather die than be caught hiding behind a child, or a woman for that matter.

No way can I believe this ever happens and I'm waiting for the evidence to back such claims.

Similarly, the Red Crescent and United Nations Mission in Palestine are extremely well respected by everyone in Palestine. To don the orange vest gives you and instant invitation to people's homes, because you've volunteered to come help out and share for a very brief time what they've had to endure most of their lives. They only ask if you would 'tell your Government back home' what's really going on. It's ridiculous to suggest 'terrorists' would try to hide in the UN school or the Red Crescent compound. To shoot from those buildings would likely get the perpetrators lynched by their own people. One of the few things Palestinians from all factions agree on is they don't want either the UN or IRC/RC to pack up and leave.

The Intafada united the Palestinians as never before. The merchants in the old British Mandate quarter and the stallholders in the Old Town combined with the middle classes in the hills and the poor of the camps. It didn't start with any overtly religious agenda - just a spontaneous eruption of pissed-off-ness. It's significant that the hot spots, Khan Younis and Jabaliya, were adjacent to large Jewish colonies that overlooked the locals with watch towers, security fences, and priority roads. The Jewish Colony next to Jabaliya, (I forget the name) was ludicrously close - about the width of a four lane highway. Every now and then a 'Settler' would fire a round into Jabaliya, and vice versa. Two girls were shot to death on their way to school while I was there - likely by an ultra orthodox settler - one was nine and her sister was 11. The 11 year old was shot in the back running away.

Back then, as now, complaints to the Israelis followed a predictable pattern - (1) ignore - (2) blame the Palestinians - (3) Begin an investigation which traditionally goes on for 2 years or more - (4) Decide it was an accident and completely exonerate someone who everyone knows had nothing to do with it anyway (Often a Jordanian Bedouin IDF auxiliary)

Hardly any Jewish 'Settler' or IDF soldier has ever been held to account for 'excesses' (ie cold blooded murder). Justice is what's dished out to Palestinian 'terrorists'. Israel's Kahan Commission cited Ariel Sharon as having 'co-responsibility' for the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut yet it didn't impede him becoming Israeli Prime Minister - go figure?

Lastly, everyone, Israeli and Palestinian, has a memory that goes back generations - and, IMO, that's the problem. It's also a problem that the Western Media have short memories or don't bother going back to find out 'why?' Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel - why? It's simple to refrain, 'they hate Israel,' or 'they hate freedom' or other such 'Bushisms.' Yes, they hate Israel, and vice versa, but two years ago, the IDF began a blockade against the Hamas administration in Gaza.

When we say 'blockade' we must remember that everything, I mean every little thing, has to enter Gaza with Israeli permission. Gaza is walled in, the airport and harbour destroyed, and water, gas, electricity, food, everything has to come from Israel - or from Egypt at Rafah by agreement with the IDF. Gaza has little, if any, economic activity at all. Israel has their fingers on the Gazan throat without needing to occupy the place. It's one 40 kilometre long prison camp crowded with 1.5 million miserable people who'd rather be someplace else but can't get out. Make no mistake, no-one lives in the Gaza strip by choice - there's just no way of getting out! (Except by tunnel into Egypt)

Like vigilant prison guards the IDF want to destroy those 'escape routes' and the Egyptians don't want 1.5 million refugees either.

Anyway, Hamas fired homemade rockets into Israel as a protest against the blockade. Israel said they'll ease the blockade if Hamas stopped firing rockets, Okay, there was a kind of truce, but Israel didn't ease the blockade and stated they want to bring down the Hamas administration. Okay, end of truce and beginning of invasion in response - etc, etc...

There's a predictability about the whole thing - like everyone's following a script. The Intafada of 1986-89 gave the IDF a shock, but the IDF learned the lessons. They learned the military lessons, sure, but not the political ones. Hamas learned, too, how to win the war of world opinion, against some pretty stupid Israeli misinformation. But, Israel doesn't care about world opinion - it gave up on that long ago. The only Israeli newspaper that reports from Gaza is Ha'aretz, and the editor needs an armed guard by him 24 hours a day. Ha'aretz is the only left wing paper of the four most popular dailies in Israel. Israelis are generally sick of the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, and are extraordinary indifferent to their plight. Simply, they don't want to know and believe the world doesn't understand their situation. At least, that's the impression I had in Ashqelon, 1988.

Tell me different and/or tell me what's changed?

Don